Day four of our brave new world and things are not working out quite as many of us expected, though I'm still expecting a Tory minority government in the end – what end? – because I can't see how David Cameron and Nick Clegg can both square their parties on electoral reform.

What has surprised me is that talks between the Tories and the Lib Dems are still going on. By this stage in 1974 it was all over for outgoing Tory PM Ted Heath, who couldn't give the then-Liberals enough on PR to win them over.

Will that happen again? That's my stubborn hunch, but it's looking as if I might be wrong. With every hour that passes, a deal with Labour, especially Brown-led Labour, looks more forlorn, and pressure mounts on Cameron and Clegg to cobble together something.

Something? Anything. In the past hour both Sir John Major and Lord Steel – co-author with Jim Callaghan of the 1977-78 Lib-Lab pact – have been on the airwaves stressing that, whatever the deal is, the markets will expect and the national interest demand that it to be durable for a stable, specified time: one year, two, four …

That sounds about right. "I do not think this is a dance that can go on for too long," says Major in a Majorish way, while subtly twisting the knife on Cameron's behalf to the effect that a deal with Gordon Brown is worthless: he cannot deliver what he promises.

That argument cuts both ways, of course. Cameron is not flavour of the week on the Tory right, where slow learners think he would have won handsomely on a more reactionary manifesto and point to up to six seats lost where Ukip split the rightwing vote.

Since they include David Heathcoat-Amory at Wells, defeated by half the size of the Ukip vote, that proves little more than bovine stubbornness. DH-A was just about the most Eurosceptic Tory MP.

But the right will mistrust whatever Cameron can cook up with Clegg just as many Lib Dems, fearing that the Tories want to "eat them up" (as the Guardian's leader puts it), will be fearful if Clegg manages to make any kind of deal whatsoever.

No, it's not – and the Victorians were solider citizens than we are in so many ways – it's just a different way of doing things.

Even I can see the case for change in a more fragmented, plural society. But there's no rush, and Clegg must know – even if his own dafter followers don't – that the economic crisis is more urgent by a very long way.

He dare not force another early election any more than battered, soon-to-be-leaderless Labour can. They don't have any money, the voters don't want one and they would lose it anyway. By winning nearly 100 seats the Tories have done the hard bit; they would win easily – especially if the economic storm blew in again.

One development that is giving them breathing space is that the market storm is elsewhere: raging over protracted crisis over Greece's debts and the eurozone.

Alistair Darling, still chancellor at the time of writing, is on radio and TV reporting that they've stitched up a €500bn (£436bn) support package in which Britain's exposure is much smaller than tabloid scaremongering suggests.

It's still scary stuff and the dipsy market panic over sovereign debt could yet spread to other countries in Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, also to Britain unless we quickly get a government capable of taking decisions.

The Guardian editorial very reasonably points out that the Lib Dems are a party of the left, with much more in common with a chastened post-Brown Labour party than with the Tories. All true, but it's not where we are.

Labour has lost the election, Brown is hanging on – he's about to overtake Ted Heath for stickability – and it is far from clear who his successor would be. Even as acting leader, Harriet Harman might not be the right person to steady markets or appease the baying tabloids.

So it looks as if Clegg's deal is realistically with the Tories. After all, as Tony Travers writes in today's paper, it's not as if they aren't in partnership in towns and cities all over Britain.

Ah yes, but what about that free Commons vote on electoral reform (in principle or detail?) or that referendum (ditto)? It's the Lib Dem holy grail and Cleggster will be in trouble if he puts any sort of national interest ahead of it.

Lib Dem historians know we have been here before. In 1930-31 the troubled Labour minority government of Ramsay MacDonald cut a deal on AV (Gordon Brown's formula today) with Lloyd George. It was swept away in August 1931 when Britain was forced off the gold standard and the Great Depression got really serious.

A coalition – the Tory-dominated national government – duly emerged and AV sank below the waves again. It may all come to this in the current economic crisis, this month or in months to come. But first I still expect Cameron to be forced – by both parties – to try it alone.